abandonware games sorted by popularity

European Championship 1992 captures football in a raw, almost scrappy form. This isn’t about realism or presentation; it’s about getting the ball forward and hoping for...

ICON: Quest for the Ring from 1984 feels like a fantasy board game wandered into a computer and decided to stay. Based loosely on a novel, it mixes strategy, role-playing, and enou...

War never changes—but it does get oddly cute in Cannon Fodder. Guide your tiny commandos through missions filled with explosions, carnage, and dark humor. The game mixes arca...

Think running an airline is easy? Airlines (1994) says “think again.” This old-school management sim hands you a failing fleet and a world map, then laughs quietly as y...

Tunnels of Armageddon is a video game developed by Logical Design Works and released in 1989 by California Dreams for various home computer systems, including DOS, the Commodore 64...

In Gold Rush!, the American dream is alive and well, provided you don’t mind a bit of hardship, questionable decision-making, and the occasional untimely demise. This adventu...

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier takes the least-loved movie in the franchise and turns it into a game — which is bold, maybe even illogical. Released in 1989 for DOS, it trie...

Imagine being a bouncing ball in a series of floating sky islands full of monsters, traps, and puzzles. Welcome to Cloud Kingdoms, where the laws of physics politely take a backsea...

Boulder Dash Construction Kit is both a full game and a level editor, built around the gameplay mechanics of the original Boulder Dash (1984). You still play as Rockford, the pixel...

Back in 1983, IBM Centipede brought arcade bug-blasting straight to home computers, allowing office machines to moonlight as insect exterminators. This adaptation of the arcade cla...

Wing Commander: Armada is space combat simulation game developed by Origin Systems and released by Electronic Arts in 1994 for DOS. Wing Commander: Armada is part of the Wing Comma...

Before AI could annihilate grandmasters, Psion Chess was already humbling humans back in 1985. Available for DOS and Macintosh, this game wasn’t flashy, but it didn’t n...

Ah, BurgerTime. The game that asked the important question: what if we made a platformer about a tiny chef assembling giant burgers while being chased by sentient hot dogs? You gui...

If you’ve ever wanted to feel intellectually inferior to a few hundred lines of 1981 code, Chess is your game. This digital board doesn’t bother with graphics flair or ...

In Colosso Revenge (1997, DOS), a giant angry head (presumably Colosso) is back, and it’s not in a forgiving mood. Expect side-scrolling mayhem with explosions, mutant monstr...

Stonekeep is a first-person role-playing game (RPG) developed by Interplay Entertainment. It was released for MS-DOS in 1995 and later for other platforms such as Windows and Macin...

Released in 1986, Desert Rats is a strategy game that puts you in charge of the North African campaign of World War II. Don’t let the cute title fool you—there are no a...